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KCTS
KCTS-TV, virtual and VHF digital channel 9, is a non-commercial educational television station licensed to Seattle, Washington, United States, serving as the primary member station of the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS) for the Seattle–Tacoma television market. The station's offices and studios are located at the northeast corner of Seattle Center, and its transmitter is on Capitol Hill in Seattle. KCTS-TV also operates semi-satellite KYVE (virtual channel 47, UHF digital channel 21) in Yakima, Washington, which serves as the PBS member station for the western portion of the Yakima/Tri-Cities market. KYVE has its own studio on Second Street in Yakima and transmitter on Ahtanum Ridge near Union Gap, though master control and some support operations are based at KCTS' studios in Seattle. KCTS and KYVE are owned by Cascade Public Media. History KCTS crew recording an interview with Dennis Kelso, then-commissioner of the Alaska Department of Environmental Conservation, during the cleanup of the Exxon Valdez oil spill in 1989. KCTS first went on the air on December 7, 1954, broadcasting from the campus of the University of Washington, the station's original licensee, and using equipment donated by KING-TV owner Dorothy Bullitt. During the 1950s and 1960s, KCTS primarily supplied classroom instructional programs used in Washington State's 1–12 schools, plus National Educational Television (NET) programs. Outside of schoolrooms, KCTS' audience among the general public was somewhat limited, and most programming was in black-and-white until the mid-1970s (although the station did install color capability in 1967). In 1970, National Educational Television was absorbed into the newly created Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). As a PBS member station, KCTS began offering a vastly enhanced scope of programming for the general public, including British programming. Thanks to a major fundraiser drive during the mid-1980s, KCTS moved to its present location on the Seattle Center campus in October 1986; shortly after, in 1987, the University of Washington spun off KCTS, and the station became a community licensee. KCTS is seen throughout southwestern British Columbia on local cable systems, as well as across Canada on the Bell TV and Shaw Direct satellite providers, as well as on many other Canadian cable TV systems. According to KCTS, "over 800,000 viewers tune in every week" from British Columbia KCTS receives substantial financial support from its far-flung Canadian audience as well as from viewers in Washington State. In January 2016, as part of a broader strategy redefine itself as a content provider for various other platforms other than television, the name of the licensee, KCTS Television became Cascade Public Media; its properties include KCTS-TV, Crosscut, a non-profit daily news site, and Spark Public, a local website devoted to millennial life. KYVE history In 1994, KCTS merged with KYVE, which has served central Washington since November 1, 1962. However, this wasn't the first time that the two stations had partnered together; during the early 1960s KYVE's engineers switched to and from KCTS' signal until the station's owners, the Yakima Board of Education, got enough funding for the station to be self-supporting. The station became a community licensee in 1984, but found the going difficult until its merger with KCTS. During the mid-1990s to the early 2000s, some programs included a combined KCTS/KYVE visual bug in the lower-right corner of the screen, indicating they were simulcast to both markets. However, since the early 2000s, KYVE has largely been a straight simulcast of KCTS. Combined, the two stations serve 2.4 million people, accounting for almost two-thirds of Washington state's population. Category:PBS Member Stations Category:PBS Member Networks Category:Television channels and stations established in 1954 Category:1954 Category:Television channels and stations established in 1962 Category:1962 Category:Channel 9 Category:Channel 47 Category:Seattle Category:Tacoma Category:Yakima Category:Washington Category:Former NET Affiliates Category:VHF Category:UHF Category:PBS Washington Category:Former NTA Film Network affiliates